Sydfransk landskab 1929

Vilhelm Lundstrom made this landscape of Southern France using crayon, though it's hard to say when. What jumps out is the reduction of the scene to almost cartoonish forms, a real sense of distillation. The crayon is layered, hatching marks building up tone, the whiteness of the paper acting as a contrast to the heavy darks. Look at the large rounded form in the foreground, it has an almost sculptural quality, like an egg or a huge pebble. There are meandering lines over it, which suggest a shadow, but also a sense of playful abstraction. The rest of the landscape is rendered as simple geometric shapes, like pyramids, a formal exercise in reduction and simplification. Lundstrom was part of a generation of artists who were interested in breaking down traditional forms and exploring new ways of seeing the world. You can see the influence of Cezanne here, or even Picasso, though Lundstrom has his own distinctive voice, understated but definitely radical in its own way.